Justin DavisUX guy. Javascript hacker. Co-founder of Crowdsync (crowdsync.io).http://justindavis.co/
Required Reading for All Couples<p>The stats on marriage, as we all probably know, are grim. Regardless of whether
or not the <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/heart-the-matter/201704/do-half-all-marriages-really-end-in-divorce">divorce rate is 50%</a>, there are countless stories about marriages
that aren’t doing great. Look around in your own network, you’re bound to find
some.</p>
<p>Now, while we can’t prevent all relationships from going to shit, we <em>do</em> know
some about why relationships tend to fail. According to
<a href="https://www.marriage.com/advice/divorce/10-most-common-reasons-for-divorce/">marriage.com</a>, the top
three reasons for divorce are infidelity, money, and communication issues. Not
every cause of divorce or breakups can be prevented, but we can do a lot to move
the needle more in our favor.</p>
<p>These three books are three that myself and my wife have read, and they’ve had a
huge impact on our own marriage. Whether you’ve got a picture perfect
relationship, or one that might need a bit of tinkering, there’s no doubt that
these books will make things even better.</p>
<h2 id="total-money-makeover-by-dave-ramsey">Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey</h2>
<p>Money is a huge issue in relationships, and money fights are one of the leading
causes of divorce and breakup. Usually, this comes from a lack of being on the
same page. Better communication and a shared plan with money is one of the best
ways to give your relationship a leg up.</p>
<p>Total Money Makeover is a life-changing book. Ramsey’s anti-debt stance
challenges readers to fund their life with cash, not cards, while establishing
healthy and productive ways to talk about money with your spouse.</p>
<p><a href="https://amzn.to/2qSo0sR">Buy The Total Money Makeover on Amazon</a></p>
<h2 id="the-5-love-languages-by-gary-chapman">The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman</h2>
<p>This book is a classic, and for good reasons. In it, Chapman establishes a
framework for understanding how people express and receive love. Does your
spouse feel loved when you do things for them (Acts of Service), or when you
tell them they’re doing a great job (Words of Affirmation)?</p>
<p>Knowing how your spouse (and yourself!) express and receive love is an
incredibly powerful communication tool, unlocking an entirely new way to talk to
each other, understand what the other needs, and bring a new level of harmony
into your relationship.</p>
<p><a href="https://amzn.to/2PuoZOB">Buy The 5 Love Languages on Amazon</a></p>
<h2 id="come-as-you-are">Come as You Are</h2>
<p>Yup, this is a book about sex. But, considering that one of the major causes of
divorce is infidelity, maybe boning up on the subject isn’t such a bad idea (no
pun intended).</p>
<p>Here’s the deal. If you’re in a relationship, sex is probably part of it. And,
it very well may be the reason for some fights. Like the previous two books, the
best way to get ahead of these common issues is to learn more, so it bears a bit
of research.</p>
<p>Come as You Are is a revolutionary book that dives deep into how desire and
sexuality works (are you responsive, or spontaneous desire? What about your
partner?). This book goes a long way toward helping to establish the idea that,
no matter what, you’re <em>completely normal</em> when it comes to this stuff.
Not only that, it goes hardcore (OK, pun kinda intended) into how communication,
expectations and the nature of our desire all play a part in the kind, and
quality of sex that we have.</p>
<p>You’re probably going to have sex with your partner at some point, and this
subject is something that far too few people spend the time learning more about and
understanding how to make this aspect of their relationship better. You own it
to each other.</p>
<p><a href="https://amzn.to/2Tdj66J">Buy Come as You Are on Amazon</a></p>
<p>If you’re in a relationship, you need to do the things that will help to get the
best out of it. Being in shape in your relationship is no different than being
in good physical shape. You need to learn about it, practice, and train. Even if
you don’t think divorce is something that’d ever be on the table, it’s still
worth making the most of your long-term commitment to each other. Give these three
books a read, and let me know how big an impact they had on your relationship!</p>
Fri, 16 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000http://justindavis.co/2018/11/16/required-reading-for-married-couples/
http://justindavis.co/2018/11/16/required-reading-for-married-couples/I Launched a New Podcast, and I Want You to Call In<p>I’ve always loved talk radio. You know, the shows where the radio host has
people call in, either with questions (ala <a href="https://www.cartalk.com">Car Talk</a> or <a href="https://daveramsey.com">The Dave Ramsey
Show</a>), or topics to discuss (like every political or sports show out
there).</p>
<p>So, I’ve launched a podcast just like that, called <a href="http://dbcshow.com">Design By Committee</a>.
It’s dedicated just to answering your questions and chatting about UX, product
design, content, strategy and anything else that has to do with tech.</p>
<p>I’m joined on the show by my co-host, <a href="https://twitter.com/mgrocki">Matthew Grocki</a>, one of the world’s
foremost experts in content and digital strategy. Matt and I have both been
designing and building products for nearly 20 years, for companies that range
from small startups to the Fortune 10.</p>
<p>Now, we want to bring that expertise to you. Consider this your chance at a
little free consulting, or hell, just a chance to vent about some stuff you’re
going through on your projects. Or, want an outsider’s opinion you can bring a
recorded version of to your team? Gotcha covered.</p>
<h2 id="first-time-long-time">First Time, Long Time</h2>
<p>Our show is powered by listener questions and discussion, so we can’t do the
show without you. We want you to call in, chat with us, and help make this one
of the most interactive and fun podcasts about tech in the world.</p>
<p>To call in, simply dial 813-485-4866. You’ll get a voicemail. Leave your
information, and we’ll work with you to schedule you on the show. If you’re not
the calling type, you can email us at <a href="mailto:ask@dbcshow.com">ask@dbcshow.com</a>,
and shoot us your questions there.</p>
<h2 id="subscribe-and-follow">Subscribe and Follow</h2>
<p>To subscribe to the podcast, just visit <a href="http://dbcshow.com">dbcshow.com</a>, where you’ll find
links to iTunes, Google Play Music, and Stitcher. Make sure you subscribe!</p>
<p>To follow what we’re doing on Twitter, you can check us out at
<a href="https://twitter.com/thedbcshow">@thedbcshow</a>.</p>
<p>We can’t wait to talk to you on air, and help you out with anything you’re
struggling with, or anything you want to just vent about or kick around.</p>
<p>Talk with you soon!</p>
Wed, 26 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000http://justindavis.co/2018/09/26/design-by-committee-podcast/
http://justindavis.co/2018/09/26/design-by-committee-podcast/Shitty Sales Have Made Product Development Harder<p>In an ideal world, sales is really about matchmaking. When you sell the ideal
product to the ideal customer, it’s really just about finding the intersection
of a burning need they have, and the thing you’ve built. Easy transaction.</p>
<p>In the actual world, this is far from how it happens. Historically, sales has
taken more of a technique-driven approach, leaning the right kind of closes,
dealing with objections, and finding any way possible to get your product in the
prospect’s hands.</p>
<p>And because of that, people hate salespeople (generally speaking).</p>
<p>And, that’s made it much more difficult to have the kind of genuine
conversations needed to drive early-stage product development, the kind of
conversations that are required in order to achieve product-market fit.</p>
<p>Getting to product-market fit with a product is something that all early-stage
startups have to go through. The first thing you build is a guess. Hopefully an
educated one, but a guess nonetheless. Only through talking to customers and
iterating on what you have, do you get to something that’s a better fit, and
increase your chances of success.</p>
<p>Most companies die in this stage, and shitty sales techniques aren’t helping.</p>
<p>Because of the pushy, traditional sales that we all know and hate, we’re <em>all</em>
resistant to talking to anyone about their product. Over the years, we’ve been
trained to avoid these conversations, because we know it’ll likely devolve into
a litany of techniques designed to coerce us into purchasing.</p>
<p>But, without having conversations with potential customers, how does an
early-stage startup get any feedback on where they’ve missed the product-market
fit mark?</p>
<p>I’ve seen this first-hand so many times, I’ve long lost track. Calling a
potential customer, and pleading that you <em>only want to get feedback or
thoughts</em> is, almost always, a failed approach. They sniff a backdoor sales
technique, and will flat out ignore the plea. No matter how genuine your intent
about simply gathering information, it’s very likely you’re getting shut down.</p>
<p>And so, the startup continues on, blinded by their own lack of feedback,
continuing to develop in a vacuum. And, they eventually die from this lack of
air.</p>
<p>One solution to this, of course, is to engage in formal research (as a user
researcher myself, this is something that comes much more naturally to me than other
approaches). With that said, many early startups lack the internal skill, or the
budgets, to engage in this kind of research (we can discuss the ROI of said
research, and I’d agree, but there are also some real cash constraints).</p>
<p>Ultimately, startups need to find a way around the horrible culture that shitty
sales have created, and get into a conversation with their customers and what
their problems are, what the product is, and the size of the mismatch. And, if
you’re an early-stage startup, and you aggressively push your product into
someone where you know damn well there’s not a great fit, you’re just
perpetuating the problem.</p>
<p>Finally, if someone reaches out to you, especially in the early stage, and says
they want to learn, <em>take the call</em>. Make them promise not to sell you, whatever
you have to do, but we can all help change the culture that’s been created, and
collaborate together to bring better products into the world that we all want to
buy.</p>
Wed, 11 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000http://justindavis.co/2018/07/11/shitty-sales-have-made-product-development-harder/
http://justindavis.co/2018/07/11/shitty-sales-have-made-product-development-harder/Why I'm Cold Emailing You<p>I’ve been cold emailing people. In fairly large batches (~50 a day). In fact,
you probably got one of my emails. Hopefully this post will share what the other
side of that email editor is like.</p>
<p>Most people hate getting cold emails (guess what - so do I). So, why am I
doing this?</p>
<p>Because, I want to talk to you.</p>
<p>This isn’t about sales, it’s about understanding. Sure, do I want you to use my
product, <a href="https://www.crowdsync.io">CrowdSync</a>? Absolutely. But really only if it helps solve your
problems.</p>
<p>And these cold emails, and the calls I’m asking you to jump on (thanks
in advance for the time, btw, I know how precious it is), they help me better
understand and hopefully make something that you’ll love.</p>
<p><strong>I actually hate sending out cold emails, but it’s one of the most effective
methods I have at getting in front of you.</strong></p>
<h2 id="startup-marketing-is-hard">Startup Marketing is Hard</h2>
<p>Starting something - anything - is hard. Incredibly hard. Getting attention, and
getting in front of the people who you think might be ideal customers, is an
incredibly difficult thing to do.</p>
<p>Sure, traditional marketing tactics, like content marketing (<a href="https://www.crowdsync.io/blog">which we try to do as much as we can of</a>),
advertising and <a href="https://www.twitter.com/crowdsynchq">social media</a> are helpful. But they’re not as
effective, nor as targeted, as just emailing the people who I think might make
great customers. It costs me far less to just email you, than it does to mount
an expensive campaign that my startup can’t afford.</p>
<h2 id="its-ok-to-say-no">It’s OK to Say No</h2>
<p>You can probably imagine the responses I get to the emails I send out. They
vary, from “This is great, I’d love to chat!”, to “F&amp;^$ off please”. Comes with
the territory.</p>
<p>When you get my email, it’s fine to just email me back, and let me know you’re
not interested. All good. It’s just me, <a href="https://www.twitter.com/jwd2a">Justin</a>, trying to see if what we made
could help you. Not a fit? No big deal.</p>
<h2 id="were-both-just-people-trying-to-make-our-way">We’re Both Just People, Trying to Make Our Way</h2>
<p>At the end of the day, you and I are both just trying to do the best we can.
We’re trying to make an impact, provide for our families, and do something we’re
proud of.</p>
<p>I co-founded <a href="https://www.crowdsync.io">CrowdSync</a> as a way to help people make it easier to deal
with the logistics of getting people through a process.</p>
<p>That email I sent you? That’s just me, trying to share what we’ve done, in hope
that you’ve got a problem we can help solve.</p>
<p>Just trying to make our way.</p>
Tue, 13 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000http://justindavis.co/2018/03/13/why-im-cold-emailing-you/
http://justindavis.co/2018/03/13/why-im-cold-emailing-you/How I Found Your Email<p>Over the past few weeks, we’ve been <a href="http://justindavis.co/2018/03/13/why-im-cold-emailing-you/">cold emailing people</a> about
<a href="https://crowdsync.io">CrowdSync</a>, in hopes that we can get in front of people who have a problem
that we can help them solve. We look for people on sites like LinkedIn, and try
to establish whether we think they’re a good fit, based on the words and phrases
they use, then we email them.</p>
<p>I get a lot of mixed responses - most of them polite, a few quite profane, and
others simple asking this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“How did you find my email?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The short answer? Really, really easily. Here’s one of the places we probably
found it:</p>
<h2 id="on-your-website">On Your Website</h2>
<p>This blows my mind, but it is what it is. Many people put their email address
right on their website, in plain text, then email me wondering how we found it.
Chances are, they forgot it was there.</p>
<p>(So you know, we do much of our sourcing of people via LinkedIn, and finding
your website address is as simple as checking your profile, or just googling
your name a couple keywords.)</p>
<h2 id="on-your-linkedin-profile">On Your LinkedIn Profile</h2>
<p>Speaking of LinkedIn, many people drop their email address right on their
LinkedIn profile. Again, in plain text. Piece of cake.</p>
<h2 id="in-your-resume">In Your Resume</h2>
<p>This is the gold mine that no one thinks about. An amazing amount of people have
their resume on their website (and for good reason). That resume, because it
tends to be printed and handed out or mailed, tends to have an email address on
it. 99% of the time we find a resume on your site, it has an email address in
it.</p>
<p>(BTW, we look for a resume almost immediately when we hit your site, because of
this)</p>
<h2 id="in-your-source-code">In Your Source Code</h2>
<p>This one is a bit trickier, but often, people will have their email address
somewhere in the source code of their site, usually linked from a crappy contact form that exposes the link,
sometimes from another random link on the site.</p>
<p>We’ve even found these commented out in the code.</p>
<p>Finding these is a piece of cake. We view the source of your site (which can be
done in any browser), and we search for “@”.</p>
<h2 id="in-presentations">In Presentations</h2>
<p>When people give talks, and share the slide deck on sites like
[Slideshare][slideshare], there’s a better than average chance that the first or
last slide in the deck will have an email on it. Like resumes, this is something
we look for soon after we hit a site.</p>
<h2 id="on-social-profiles">On Social Profiles</h2>
<p>On your <a href="https://www.twitter.com">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.behance.net">Behance</a>, <a href="https://www.dribbble.com">Dribbble</a> or other
social profiles. Often just jammed right there in the bio.</p>
<h2 id="in-papers">In Papers</h2>
<p>Like presentations, if people publish papers in journals, the email address is
often right there on page 1, or somewhere in the citations or author bios on the
paper. Since many papers are freely available online, this is a pretty easy
place to snag contact information.</p>
<h2 id="the-wayback-machine">The Wayback Machine</h2>
<p>Had a website a few years ago, and the domain lapsed? Or, had your email on your
site, but took it off later? A simple trip to <a href="https://archive.org">archive.org</a> and we’re
able to look back in the past and find things that don’t exist today, including
your email.</p>
<h2 id="guessing">Guessing</h2>
<p>Most email addresses follow an incredibly predictable format.
[first].[last]@company.com, or [f][last]@company.com, or [first]@company.com, or
[first].[last]@gmail.com. We’ll often just try to brute force these, knowing
we’ll still end up with about an 80% hit rate.</p>
<h2 id="how-to-not-get-found">How to Not Get Found</h2>
<p>If you don’t want to get cold emails from startups like us, I’d recommend
thinking of this as a checklist. Go through each of these places, and scrub up
where you have your contact information littered out there. It’ll make our job
harder, and keep your privacy intact.</p>
Sat, 10 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000http://justindavis.co/2018/03/10/how-I-found-your-email/
http://justindavis.co/2018/03/10/how-I-found-your-email/Sales is User Research, Undercover<p>When you do a demo or sales call, what’s your goal? Closing the deal and getting
the sale, right? Generally, that’s going to happen a fraction of the time, due
to the nature of how sales goes.</p>
<p>And, most salespeople will chalk that call up to a failure, or at the very
least, not a good investment of their time.</p>
<p>But there’s another way to think of sales calls that turn every single one of
them into incredibly valuable time spent.</p>
<p><strong>Think of a sales call as user research, and the entire game changes.</strong></p>
<p>Thinking of a sales call as a user research opportunity changes the entire tenor
of the conversation. Instead of starting by launching into your demo and canned
pitch, you start with questions:</p>
<ul>
<li>Tell me about what you do.</li>
<li>What is difficult about your role?</li>
<li>You scheduled time for a demo with me. Talk to me about what piqued your
interest.</li>
<li>What other solutions are you using today to solve this problem? Where do they
fall short?</li>
</ul>
<p>…and so on.</p>
<p>As objections come up, instead of replying with your canned ways around those
objections, ask questions like “So, tell me more about why that’s important”, so
you can better understand where the need is coming from, and get a richer view
of the people you’re speaking with.</p>
<p>It’s easy to chalk sales up to being just churn-and-burn calls to try to nail a
close ratio, but it’s missing a far more valuable part of the conversation. If
you approach every call thinking of it as an opportunity to <em>learn</em> more about
the person you’re talking to, even if they don’t become a customer right away,
you’ll walk away from every sales call with a victory.</p>
<hr />
<p>If you’re looking to make either your sales pipeline or your user research
process easier to manage, check out what we’re doing here at <a href="https://www.crowdsync.io">CrowdSync</a>.</p>
<p>And, we’d love to chat with you to better understand your needs too - just
<a href="https://app.crowdsync.io/e/ee3f44">schedule a demo with us</a>.</p>
Fri, 09 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000http://justindavis.co/2018/03/09/sales-is-user-research-undercover/
http://justindavis.co/2018/03/09/sales-is-user-research-undercover/Announcement: The Most Exciting Thing I've Done<p>Today, <a href="https://www.crowdsync.io">CrowdSync</a>, a company I’ve co-founded with <a href="https://joshtronic.com">Josh Sherman</a> is
officially in open beta.</p>
<p>This is the most exciting thing I’ve worked on to date.</p>
<h2 id="what-is-crowdsync">What is CrowdSync?</h2>
<p>CrowdSync helps you automate paperwork, communications and logistics when
dealing with groups of people. If you’re onboarding people into a class, trying
to distribute information to a large group, or doing anything else where you’re
sending or requesting the same information from a group of people, CrowdSync can
save you hours, or days, of time.</p>
<h2 id="why-is-this-so-big">Why is this so big?</h2>
<p>CrowdSync is one of the first platforms of its kind that lets people build
workflows to automate repetitive manual tasks with groups. These tasks today can
cost companies thousands of dollars a month in manual tasks: copying the same
email and attaching the same documents for every new hire, or requesting every
student to fill out the same allergy form. Whatever the use case, it’s a
horribly manual process that’s prone to error. Until today.</p>
<h2 id="how-does-it-work">How does it work?</h2>
<p>Check out the <a href="https://www.crowdsync.io/blog/2017/11/08/announcing-our-open-beta/">blog post</a> we wrote about how exactly CrowdSync works. In
short, we let you create workflows of actions (like, sending emails, requesting
forms to be completed, sending/receiving payments, etc), and add groups of
people to those workflows. We’ll track them through the process, reminding them
along the way. All automatically.</p>
<h2 id="special-offer-to-my-readers">Special offer to my readers!</h2>
<p>From now through December 1, 2017, the beta of <a href="https://www.crowdsync.io">CrowdSync</a> is COMPLETELY FREE.
After that, the price will go up to $49/mo, for unlimited workflows.</p>
<p>But, if you want to lock in a crazy good deal, check this out. You can hit us up
before December 1st, and we’ll lock you in at $19/mo FOR LIFE. That’s right -
you’ll never pay any more than that to use CrowdSync, for as long as you want.</p>
<p>If you want to take advantage of this, <a href="https://goo.gl/forms/Ih5TcqJziOyWYBP12">hit us up here</a>.</p>
<p>So, I definitely encourage you to <a href="https://app.crowdsync.io/signup">go give the beta a spin</a> and make
sure to read <a href="https://www.crowdsync.io/blog/2017/11/08/announcing-our-open-beta/">our blog post</a> about what to expect from it in the
next few months. We’re just getting started, to say the least.</p>
Wed, 08 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000http://justindavis.co/2017/11/08/announcing-the-most-exciting-thing-ive-done/
http://justindavis.co/2017/11/08/announcing-the-most-exciting-thing-ive-done/Three Ways to Start Talking to Users<p>If there’s anything that startups don’t do enough, it’s talk to users. Sure, you
field support calls, talk to users during your sales process, but how often do
you sit down and listen to them, trying to understand what problems they’re
trying to solve, and how well your product is solving it? Probably not nearly as
often as you should.</p>
<p>Going out into the field and talking to your users (“Getting out of the
building” as <a href="https://www.inc.com/steve-blank/key-to-success-getting-out-of-building.html">Steve Blank</a> says) is one of the most useful and
eye-opening experiences you can have. In the years that I’ve spent doing this,
I’ve never come back saying “Yup, pretty much what I thought”. I always learn
something, and the product gets better as a result. Every single time.</p>
<p>So, if this is so valuable, why don’t more startups do it? Frankly, I think it’s
because they either don’t believe they’ll learn anything, or because they just
don’t know how to do it. The first requires being more humble, something I can’t
fix for you. The second, I can.</p>
<p>Here are three steps to talk to more users:</p>
<p><strong>Figure out what you want to know</strong></p>
<p>When you go out to talk to your users (or potential users), you should have an
idea of what questions you’re trying to answer. Are you trying to understand how
they solve a specific problem today? Do you want to know what their environment
looks like, so you can design your product to fit in better? Do you want to see
where they might be getting hung up on a particular process? It doesn’t matter
what question you start with, just that you have <em>something</em> in mind that you
want to answer.</p>
<p>A few easy places to start: if you’re pre-launch or doing initial development,
go out to find out how they’re handling the problem you want to solve for them.
For <a href="https://www.crowdsync.io">CrowdSync</a>, we went out and asked users how they currently get people through
a repetitive process like onboarding, asking to see their checklists and other
materials. That insight helped us to know what we needed to build, and what we
<em>didn’t</em> need to build.</p>
<p>If you’re post-launch, you can go out and test your product with people who’ve
never used it. Ask them to do a common task in it, and watch them struggle.
Don’t help, just ask questions. If you’re considering a new feature, treat it
like a pre-launch situation, and go ask how they view the problem that you’re
looking to solve with the new feature.</p>
<p>Chances are, you’ve got things you wonder today. Start with those questions and
build from there (trust me, once you start doing this, questions are going to
pile up quickly).</p>
<p><strong>Ask your networks</strong></p>
<p>When I recommend people talk to users more often, the most common question I
hear is “how do I find them?”. Depending on your audience, these users might be
everywhere (for a consumer app), or more scarce (for a niche enterprise
product). Either way, if you’re starting a startup, you should already have
<em>some</em> idea of how to find users (how are you getting to market, anyway?).</p>
<p>Here’s an easy way to start: ask your networks. Post to Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn, whatever. Ask if you can chat with someone for 30 minutes. Sounds
simple, because it is. Post something like this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hey! Looking to chat with some dance instructors about how they register their
students and communicate with them throughout the year. Not selling anything,
just want to chat for 30 minutes. Anyone game?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another tip: offer up an incentive, like a gift card, to compensate the user for
their time. This will both help with finding users, and will ensure they feel
fairly treated for the time they’re giving you.</p>
<p>In short, don’t overcomplicate this. Too many people make excuses about not
talking to their users because they don’t know where to find them. Start by
asking your networks, and you’ll find that it’s much easier than you think.</p>
<p><strong>Resist Helping and Selling</strong></p>
<p>If you’re talking to users, there are two temptations: to help them if they’re
having problems with your product, or to sell them on your product if they’re
not already a customer.</p>
<p>Don’t do this. Either of them.</p>
<p>If you’re watching them use your product, and they’re having trouble, don’t say
“Oh, over here, click this”. Instead, ask them what’s wrong. Saying something
like “Can you tell me what it is you’re looking for?” or “Explain to me what
you’re doing right now” will yield huge insights into where your product is
confusing. Helping them only embarrasses them, and prevents you from finding out
why it’s confusing. Yes, you’ll see behavior that’s crazy. That’s the goal. Be
OK with that discomfort, and use it to dig into where it’s not matching their
expectations.</p>
<p>If they’re not a customer, don’t sell them. Please, please don’t do this.
Selling them on your product is an easy temptation to fall victim to. Here’s a
user that has the problem you’re trying to solve, and they’re sitting in front
of you talking about it. Easy sales opportunity! The problem is, selling them on
your product invalidates all your other questions, as you’re now trying to
convince them that they have a problem that you can solve, instead of finding
out if they really do. It also violates their trust - they signed up to talk to
you because they wanted to talk about their problems, not to get a sales pitch.</p>
<p>It’s OK to show them your product, and ask them if it seems like it’d help them.
But don’t convince them it will. If they say “Hrmm, I don’t think it would,
because…”, don’t try to change their mind. Ask them why, and take that
understanding back to your team.</p>
<p>Talking to your users is one of the most rewarding and advantageous things you
can do when you’re building a product. And, it’s so rare, it’s also a
competitive advantage. Don’t wait until your users are contacting you through
your support center. Find a question to answer, hit your networks and find a few
people, and go sit and listen to them. Do this a few times, and it’ll completely
change how you build products.</p>
<p>One last thing that I get asked often is how many people you need to talk to.
The good news is, not very many. This is <em>qualitative</em> research, not
quantitative, so sample size isn’t a thing. One person a week is a massive
improvement, so start there. Don’t get hung up on numbers, but rather, get hung
up on the quality of the time you spend with them.</p>
<p>There you go! No more excuses to not understand what your users are going
through. Start today, next issue!</p>
Thu, 26 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000http://justindavis.co/2017/10/26/how-to-talk-to-users/
http://justindavis.co/2017/10/26/how-to-talk-to-users/How to Post to Private Slack Channels from Zapier<p><a href="https://zapier.com">Zapier</a> is cool. We use it at <a href="https://www.crowdsync.io">Crowdsync</a> to automate a bunch of
things, oftentimes, needing to post to a private channel on Slack to deliver
some kind of notification. We’ve got a private support channel, and a private
monitoring channel, letting us know when support requests come in, or when new
users register, respectively.</p>
<p>When we first set this up, I was kinda bummed. It didn’t look like Zapier would
let you post to private channels on Slack. But, some experimentation led to a
simple solution.</p>
<p>When setting up a Zap with Slack, first, set it up to send a channel message:</p>
<p><img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/s/depll6viwkjuoc3/Screenshot%202017-10-16%2011.00.56.png" alt="channel message setup" /></p>
<p>Next, authorize your Slack account, or choose the one you want to use:</p>
<p><img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/s/2qy8qlgva513eju/Screenshot%202017-10-16%2011.01.12.png" alt="slackaccounts" /></p>
<p>After you’ve done that, you’ll setup this template. This is where you’ll choose
the channel, but alas, I only see my public channels in the “Channel” list!</p>
<p><img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/s/f3uvc5rc3mppf3l/Screenshot%202017-10-16%2011.01.34.png" alt="channeldropdown" /></p>
<p>Here’s the trick:</p>
<p><strong>From this list, select “Use a Custom Value (advanced)”:</strong></p>
<p>Then, in the box below that one, which says “Custom Value for Channel ID”,
simply type in the name of your private channel:</p>
<p><img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/s/ue7ljvf906iefcn/Screenshot%202017-10-16%2011.01.49.png" alt="private" /></p>
<p>Boom! You’re in business! Go ahead and set the rest of the template up and give
it a test. You should now see your notifications coming into your private
channels!</p>
<p>Hope this helps you be more productive with Zapier and Slack!</p>
Mon, 16 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000http://justindavis.co/2017/10/16/how-to-post-to-private-slack-channels-from-zapier/
http://justindavis.co/2017/10/16/how-to-post-to-private-slack-channels-from-zapier/A Peek Inside our UX Process<p>As we continue to build <a href="https://www.crowdsync.io">CrowdSync</a>, we’re constantly needing to come up
with solutions for design problems that crop up. When we think of (or discover
via customer research) a new feature, we need to figure out the best way to drop
it into the app so it’s easy to use and understand.</p>
<p>Since this is a process that nearly everyone building products goes through, we
thought we’d give a glimpse into how this process works for us, in case you want
to steal parts of it for your own projects.</p>
<h2 id="the-brief">The Brief</h2>
<p>Every problem starts with, well, a problem. We don’t typically write this out
longhand, it’s generally a Slack conversation to the effect of:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So, we probably need a way for people to create a form to collect information,
then define the email that sends it out. Thinking we might be able to do this
as a wizard, or maybe a set of panels that collapse. Thoughts?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We try to keep this pretty fluid, going back and forth on what the key
requirements might be, the key constraints (“We can’t really do X, since we’re
using the lefthand side of the screen for Y”), and coming to some preliminary
ideas.</p>
<p>Our mantra is to get things into code as quickly as we can, so we see how they
work, so we don’t spend much time here. A conversation on Slack for 5 minutes,
and one of us is off to the races to start to dig into solutions.</p>
<h2 id="volume-and-flow-studies">Volume and Flow Studies</h2>
<p>I (Justin) have been doing UX fulltime for around a decade or so, and I’ve
developed a process by which I tend to break down UX problems. First, the brief,
as mentioned above. This will generally also include any customer feedback we’ve
gathered, which manifest as requirements or constraints.</p>
<p>Next up are flow and volume studies. These tend to come out of my experience in
<a href="http://archdesign.utk.edu/">architecture school</a>, where designing buildings was similar to
designing interactive experiences.</p>
<p>First, we’ll outline the overall experience with rough flows:</p>
<p><img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/s/bitczeczrev1rel/flow.JPG" alt="flow sketch" /></p>
<p>We’re not trying to create art here. We’re trying to think on paper as quickly
as possible, to understand the full end-to-end experience of using this feature.
This is fast and furious, sketching quick thumbnails to think through movement,
focusing less on how screens are designed, and more on how the entire experience
weaves together.</p>
<p>Next up are volume studies. This, again, stems from my time in architecture
school, where we’d work with blocks of foam or wood <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=volume+studies+architecture&amp;tbm=isch&amp;tbo=u&amp;source=univ&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwj217Pm7OjWAhVF7iYKHcjUCb8Q7AkIMQ&amp;biw=1482&amp;bih=1299">to create abstract volume
studies of space</a>. I find this great to do with UI, as it helps to
think about hierarchy and movement within a single space (read: screen). This
starts to help me think about how a user moves through the page, where key areas
of interest might be, and how we might structure a narrative to be easy to
understand.</p>
<p>Here’s what they typically look like:</p>
<p><img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/s/xknnx11ffhji9tw/volume%20studies.JPG" alt="volume studies for UI" /></p>
<p>Again, not art, but thinking. I’ll try to create a handful of these, sometimes
3-4, or up to a dozen, depending on the complexity of the task. The goal here is
to allow myself to bring new conceptual and strategic ideas into the fold,
before I let the details get in the way.</p>
<h2 id="more-detail-and-thumbnail-layouts">More Detail and Thumbnail Layouts</h2>
<p>Flow and volume studies typically take 15-20 minutes of exploration, and give me
the groundwork for ways to start to structure the experience. With that intact,
it’s time to jump into some screen level details at a high level.</p>
<p>Here, I’m starting to block out areas of the interface that I know will be
required, again, not paying much attention to high-fidelity detail, but
capturing the key content and interaction areas:</p>
<p><img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/s/mehubnxbgeq1t8g/thumbnails.JPG" alt="thumbnail UI sketches" /></p>
<p>These, combined with the previous sketches I’ve done, start to paint a pretty
vivid picture in my head about how a user might move through this experience. I
can start to weigh specific UI elements (“Hmmm, a wizard would give us this
advantage, but collapsible panels let us do this”), and think through the
tradeoffs we’ll inevitably have to make.</p>
<p>Like the volume studies above, I try to go for quantity with thumbnails. As a
rule, I never only sketch one concept, and in fact, I’d argue that I never
sketch less than 3 ideas. Because they’re small, quick and lacking much detail,
it’s fast to go through these ideas, and the lack of detail gives you permission
to throw the bad ones away, since you haven’t spent so much time on them (see
our post about <a href="https://www.crowdsync.io/blog/2017/09/28/how-to-know-what-features-to-kill?utm-source=crosspost">sunk costs when dealing with features</a>, and you’ll know
why it’s important not to get wedded to certain ideas too early).</p>
<p>Another thing about volume: sometimes your first idea <em>is</em> the right idea, but
oftentimes, it’s not. Often, you’ll combine several ideas into the right
solution, making the number of ideas critical to helping get to better
solutions.</p>
<p>If I can give you one piece of advice when designing something, don’t design one
solution and be done. Consider different approaches, then converge to the right
one.</p>
<h2 id="selecting-and-refining">Selecting and Refining</h2>
<p>Once we’ve done the thumbnail sketches, it’s usually time to start talking
through it with the team. We’ll toss the sketches in Slack, and discuss the
relative merits of each one, eventually coming together on what we think is
probably the best approach.</p>
<p>This kind of collaboration is important, because we can socialize these early
ideas with areas of the company that might affect implementation (“Oh, that idea
you have there, going to be hard due to X, Y, Z limitations. Maybe we can do
this instead…”).</p>
<p>Once that’s done, it’s onto final sketches:</p>
<p><img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/s/i837ec79ociy05m/final%20sketch.JPG" alt="detailed UI sketch" /></p>
<p>As you can see, still not high artwork! Again, we’re not striving to make
artifacts for the sake of artifacts, we’re trying to think on paper before
jumping into the code.</p>
<p>Once we’ve got this level of detail in place, it’s generally time to jump into
the editor (we love <a href="http://www.vim.org/">Vim</a> at CrowdSync), and start to build things out.
Rarely do we find the need to formally wireframe or comp out these interfaces,
unless there are highly complex issues that we need to see at a detail level
before committing the time to prototyping them.</p>
<h2 id="from-here-to-launch">From Here to Launch</h2>
<p>The rest of this process is pretty straightforward. Develop a prototype of the
feature on a branch (quickly, within a day or so if possible), show it to the
team, show it to some users, get feedback, and iterate. Polish things up, kick
it to production, and onto the next one!</p>
<p>Do you have any UX tricks in your process? Any special things you like to do to
think through new features? Leave em in the comments!</p>
<p>Next issue!</p>
Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000http://justindavis.co/2017/10/12/a-peek-inside-our-UX-process/
http://justindavis.co/2017/10/12/a-peek-inside-our-UX-process/